Germany as a role model?: Time for something to change in football

This week something will happen at the headquarters of the European Football Union (UEFA) that has not often happened in recent years and decades when it comes to the future of football: At the seat of government of European football there will be open and controversial discussions .

At first glance, this is about the details of the already decided reform of the Champions League for the 2024/25 season, which could be changed again on May 11 at the UEFA Congress due to numerous resistance.

Most associations and clubs in Vienna will continue to focus primarily on how their clientele gets the largest possible piece of the international cake.

And last but not least, as has been the case for years, the question is: Are the big ones getting bigger?

Business as usual, one might think.

Michael Horini

Football correspondent Europe in Berlin.

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It's true: the football business has been growing and growing for years and decades.

So far, no crisis has changed anything, neither a global financial crash nor a pandemic.

The European football business got bigger and bigger.

The volume of the Champions League alone is growing from currently around 3.2 billion euros per season to soon around 5 billion euros.

The tip in particular benefits from this.

But since war has been raging in Europe, football has also been caught up in a reality that it can no longer ignore in the boxes in its stadiums.

There are now first signs of a change in attitude among leading figures in European football and European politics, in UEFA, in clubs and in politics.

The new keywords from the seemingly eternal gold digging industry are: self-determination and sustainability.

Until the very end, the community-building sport of Europeans was a great pioneer of globalization.

The positive financial effects were taken with them without hesitation.

And it didn't matter where the money came from.

And in which dependencies one went with financiers from Russia, China or the Middle East.

But now there are first indications that forward-looking sports policy forces are making a new risk assessment in the football business.

The long-suppressed cost of cash flow from dodgy states and companies is coming into focus.

The big question, which now ranks above all others in European football at the UEFA Congress, is: has European football reached the limits of its growth strategy so far, is the pendulum swinging back?

Boris Johnson wants to regulate

The strongest signs that the tide is changing come from the island, the motherland of football and its heedless commercialization from even the murkiest sources.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last week that he would regulate English professional clubs.

His government wants to create an independent regulator and give it enough power to oversee and sanction the big Premier League clubs.

With his cabinet, he will ensure that the

the fans back "at the center of the game," said Johnson.

That sounds, at least in English football, at least a bit like a turning point.